


that which is, yet is not familiar

by awraithofwhite



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-World War I, Scottish Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27883089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awraithofwhite/pseuds/awraithofwhite
Summary: 〝 in my dreams i see the faces of those i have lost . . . and they see me 〞
Relationships: Polly Gray & Original Female Character(s), Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> this story has been long-since promised, but the new version of 'come right' is finally here! i have taken much too long to rewrite this and i sincerely apologize to my old readers for taking over a year? to upload this? i am so so sorry, but i think the wait was worth it because i am finally satisfied with the plot i have planned.
> 
> first and foremost, i want to give credit to Zed Minsky on FF.net for inspiring the layout + style of this chapter; i recently read their story 'alternate world' and it is a beautiful piece. i highly recommend that you go check them out!
> 
> i would like to note that this story will include canon themes from peaky blinders such as violence, swearing, and period-typical sexism. there will also be mentions of death and references to nightmares, as they are essential to this story. also i apologize that this chapter is very piecy, i wanted to sort of lay the groundwork here and in the next chapter. as the story goes on there will not be as much.
> 
> with all that said, i hope you enjoy this new rendition! if you have the time to leave any kind of feedback, it would be much appreciated.

𝔒𝔫𝔢:

They came to take the horses before summer gave its final farewell. Fog lapped at boots as they splashed and stomped and walked across acres of land that were not theirs to disturb; they formed a crescendo against the cobblestones, disrupted the peace that had been there before. There had still been puddles from a sudden swell of thunderclouds, rain that had long since fallen mixing with dirt and leaving globs of mud near the front of the stables that broke under these boots and broke into more globs and made more puddles.

Standing in one of the stalls herself, she heard the melody of shoe bottoms, the squash of mud underneath feet and had thought it was Douglas coming in with his boys for an early muck out as he always did in the warmth of the summer months, leading the horses to the pastures in the cool of early mornings and bringing them back into the stables when the sun peaked through the clouds and the heat settled in.

Some of the horses would role in those globs of mud or dry patches of dirt in the pastures and soil their coats, and her cousins would be left to wash them down until they were shiny and new, ready to spend hours in the gallops with her until their coats became soiled once more.

"Pardon me, miss."

But it had not been Douglas or his boys, or her cousins ready to wash soiled coats. She heard an English accent, turned to meet a green gaze.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"We're here for the horses, miss. By order of his Majesty, all horses and vehicles are to be impressed for public service."

She blinked. Her throat felt dry and she almost croaked, "Impressed?"

"Yes. To take them, miss. For the war." He spoke as if she had no recollection of that which was going on; it made her cheeks flush pink.

"I know what it means," she mumbled. She was not naive, what else could it be besides the war? . . . But what did the king need _their_ horses for? Was he so lacking of his own steeds and his own automobiles that he meant to snatch theirs away like those who snatched stray dogs and other stray things?

"I just- . . ."

The screech of stall doors silenced her as it silenced the boots, bringing life to another chorus, one of dozing horses suddenly woken from their states of half-asleep and peace. Her mind went to one, in particular; his name was Polo, and she thought of how he would not be altogether too happy to be separated from his sanctuary.

"Miss . . ."

Dark curls brushed against her neck as she startled like the horses, having forgotten the man in front of her.

"I must insist," he said. "I cannot disregard my orders." He spoke tenderly, this man, not like those in uniforms who stomped their boots; and yet that was what he was.

Her hand instinctively rested on her beloved Rudy's neck. "I- I don't understand, why- . . ."

"Evie . . ."

The horses' whinnies quieted, doors no longer screeched. The tender-voiced man turned his head and the scuffling of boots surrendered to the commanding tap of a raven's head cane; he stepped aside to let Evie peer out into the long hall of the stable.

Her grandfather stood there, a tall shadow tidied up in a gray suit and a somber expression, trailed by the fog that lapped at his shiny, black shoes. "Let the lad in," he said.

𝔦𝔦:

Cheek brushing against a cotton drape, she looked down the length of the road on which dozens of their horses were lead away from the grounds, from their places of sanctuary and their fields where she watched them soil their coats and roll through globs of mud. The acres of grass where they would run and graze and rest, those fields were scarcely filled now, left to be dotted with the coats of ponies and colts that they could not take. _The useless ones_ , she heard one man say.

She told them to be gentle with their horses, these men; to please, please be gentle, these men that stomped in with their boots opened the stalls without asking. Though they would not leave without the horses, they had at least had the decency to do that. Evie hated that they did not ask, that she had to hear them barge in and be told without warning that they were there to take the horses away . . . but why would they think to ask? They were abiding by orders, given permission by her grandfather's signature on a piece of parchment that said yes, they were allowed to come in there at dawn, to take their horses away before Douglas could let them out in the fields and before her cousins could wash them down.

Before some of them could even nibble at hay or grass or even wake from their sleep, he had already given these men permission; and as she leaned into the drape, fingers curling around the dyed fabric with memories of her Rudy, she thought of something: he hadn't told her. Early arrivals and quick explanations in the midst of choruses of boots and protesting horses aside, her grandfather never _told her_ what he had done. He had just let her find out for herself.

𝔦𝔦𝔦:

They were not allowed to take "valuables", her grandfather said. Mares and prize winners, racehorses with worth to their name could not be taken into battle, into another field that was more dirt than grass and more blood than dirt; people would start a riot over the news of the death of a Diamond Jubilee or a Gay Crusader or of a stallion that was guaranteed to breed the next.

_A riot_ , she thought. _Well, if they can start a riot over Darby winners and prized ponies, then why can I not start a riot over my Rudy?_

The tender-voiced man had taken him from her; he gave her a sweet smile and took him gently as she had asked, and she prayed to God Rudy would stay with that man.

𝔦𝔳:

Her father was in those fields, those bloody fields in France where he fought alongside her uncle and other uncles and other fathers and sons. If the horses were to be taken there, then at least they would be with him.

𝔳:

Mornings found themselves cold and unwelcoming, glass blurred with condensation and windowpanes creaking under the slaps of wind which did not show them or much of anything any mercy at all; it bit cruelly at the flowers she planted herself, at the ivy that twirled around brick walls and stall doors, at her cheeks and nose which blushed red. Leaves fell dead on the cobblestones, crunched under the stomp of her own boots, idle and echoing in the empty stable she would trail into as if expecting soft coats and nibbling muzzles to still be there.

Evie would catch herself waking up and dressing for a day in the gallops out of years of practiced discipline and would halt her movements with a start, the memory of Rudy and Polo and the whinnies of all the horses who were roused only to be taken from their comfort trickling back to the forefront of her mind. She would plop onto her bed and begin to weep because they no longer waited for her to come for them, for Douglas to set them free for a while and let them roll in dirt that would soil their coats and be washed away by her cousins.

_They're gone. They're gone, they're gone, they're gone- . . ._

She hoped they would be with more tender-voiced men because as the months clambered on, she learned they would be near bombs, shouts, gunfire, and more loud things that would startle them and scare them.

_Please be gentle with them . . . please please, please._

𝔳𝔦:

Her grandfather had wrapped his arm around her shoulders as he took her away from the stomping boots and roused horses, said, "Not even us breeders can hide ours from the King."

𝔳𝔦𝔦:

And yet she hoped no more men would stomp with their boots and disturb their grounds to take more.

𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦:

Evie watched from underneath her umbrella as her little brother grunted at his boots which fell into globs of mud with a squish, out with a squelch, over slippery piles of grass that had almost made him slip and fall facefirst into other globs of mud. The ponies liked to play with him, mischievous and giddy even when soaked under a drizzle that had once been a downpour, because he did not know how to catch them as she did and they enjoyed making him frustrated.

"For Christ's sake, get over 'ere you little devils!" Charlie shook a fist through the air in a fit of righteous anger she had never seen before, slipping and tripping and making it harder on himself while the little animals whinnied in a fit of glee. Hands muddy, he pushed himself up from where he had fallen in a whim of determination to catch the miniature horses, and sauntered on . . . though with just two steps forward, as careful as he was, he fell again and caked his clothes with mud.

Evie giggled behind her hand, bringing his attention over to her, for the sound had vexed him.

"Aye, laugh all you wan', but could ya do it out 'ere while yer helpin' me?"

She said, "No, I think I'll jus' stay 'ere and see 'ow you handle yourself."

It was his responsibility to look after the little ones, after all.

𝔦𝔵:

She liked to think Charlie was put in charge of the ponies that flit about and dotted the fields because they were just as mischievous as he could be, and to see them act so as he tripped along and caked himself in mud and felt his cheeks redden in righteous anger, would by-and-by change his own flippancy.

𝔵:

Doune House had been a place which housed her family for seven generations; she knew nothing but it, with its redeemed wood paneling and old brick exterior and the details that would go unnoticed under paintings of their prize-winning horses that lined the halls, details that she would find in the back of the bookcase in her grandfather's study. Ivy forever grew from the cobblestones in every nook, every window pane and cranny with cobwebs and cracks and remnants of things once there, no longer. It sat like a pinpoint in the middle of sprawling fields of which she gazed at through her windows- was swallowed by them, admired less than the land.

An old home, it was, coated in dust spores with limbs that creaked like her grandfather's and stood bathed in spots of yellowish light, because their windows looked more like stained glass and the rooms looked more like sanctuaries, curtains muting sunlight into a soft, orange glow that felt dreamy and made her sleepy. Every chair was cushioned, every hall was long; and since its creation, the house was intended to be for a family, for fire-lit nights and mornings subdued in pinks and yellows.

It made her wonder how anything sad or tragic could ever happen inside it.

𝔵𝔦:

A portrait hung by its lonesome over a gaping hearth in a room she never stepped into. As a child, she would hasten across carpeted floors and risk tripping over her feet to get by it, risk burning her elbows and her knees on harsh stitching because there was always a sense of dread that oozed from that room, and she could feel it, even then.

That portrait faced the doorway, and if it was open, the first thing she would see would be a painted pair of stark grey eyes, blended with blues and greens, and they bore into her in a way that crawled up her spine and raised her skin into gooseflesh; they were the eyes of an ancestor, the eyes of the one who founded their success, and her mother once said she looked just like her.

"Just like our dear Lady Sutton."

It was her mother's room, anyhow, where the portrait hung by its lonesome as she sat in there and read, fell asleep, woke with a crick in her neck in subdued hues of gray because the orange glow did not spill into this room.

Maybe that was why Evie hated it; in a house of cozy warmth and oranges, spotted light through stained glass and portraits of horses, amongst a collection of rooms that were swaddled, there was a one that was cold and stiff and gray. When her mother passed away, it was locked away with its painting and its dread.

𝔵𝔦𝔦:

A doctor declared her mother, Margaret, sickly on account of absurd amounts of stress and strain on the heart, heightened by medication that flared her senses and made her see things as if dreaming while still awake. It made her dream when the sun would peek through in spots of yellow, dream when their rooms of comfort succumbed to the dark and lost that orange glow.

And when she was awake, cheek brushed against the drapes, she would watch a girl walk across her own grave, hands digging into the earth she was returned to. Margaret knew that girl, in her haze of a dream-like consciousness, without ever meeting her, she knew. She knew her little Elizabeth.

𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔦:

Evie never saw her, this girl who walked over her own grave, this girl who would have been her sister, but she pretended she did for her mother. She pretended she saw curls that matched her own twisted into twin braids, slumped over shoulders as hands dug into dirt; she pretended she saw it, boots trotting over this plot of ground where a baby had been buried, until her mother became too weak from the absurd amounts of stress and strain on her heart, heightened by medication that flared her senses and made her see things until she fell sick and breathed her last, and she was buried in another plot, next to the one where Elizabeth lay.

𝔵𝔦𝔳:

Evie dreamt of the both of them, after that, met in her dreams a sister she never had.

𝔵𝔳𝔦:

And when the horses were taken, she dreamt of them too.

𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦:

Douglas still came to their old relic of a house, even if there were very few horses for him to mind. He continued to march along for a morning's muck out as he did in the heat of the summer months, in the cold of the winter when the warmth was no longer there; especially when the warmth was no longer there. He would mind the stalls and mind the tack that sat in another room and collected dust, minded the ponies that escaped from Charlie's grasp, mischievous and giddy, mucking out abandoned stalls and bringing them into those. They were fine in their fields, but he wanted them to be warm.

When frost curled around the windowpanes and chill nipped at their noses, he would help her cover them in their blankets, these prize-winning, valuable horses and young steeds that were left who could not take the cold; these horses that were not so hardy as their Shetland ponies who endured the winds.

He worked until his hands were raw, sometimes, a lot of times. He worked himself and worked the boys that were left and made them stay until there was nothing to stay for, and then he would work some more by his lonesome, humming a tune to the horses that were still there in their comfort, a melody echoing in that big stable where boots stomped, where men came and took the rest.

She heard him sometimes, humming this tune, peaked from her window which displayed the stables, picture-perfect in its frame, and saw him working- _still_ working -with a threadbare coat wrapped around him.

Evie thought to find him a new one, one that was not covered in patches and resewn spots and stretched thin from a-few-too-many rough winters. He had never had another in all the time she knew him, never thought to, because he often remarked on the patches and the resewn spots with a worry that made her wonder if he could even afford a new one.

_He won't take it if I give it to him_ , she thought. In all his stubborn pride and urge to pay for everything that was his own, he would not if it was in her hands. She knew that; she went out of her way to make sure he wouldn't know she had paid for something that would be his, searched for one that would bear his likeness, and woke up early- earlier, before he would come and his boys would come after -to leave it in the stables where he would see it, hanging there with nothing but the horses he minded and the tack he cleaned.

And on that morning when the wind nipped her nose red and when horses roused in their blankets, had the stables been filled with his humming that day, it might have worked.

𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦:

Douglas never came to the stables that day because he had been summoned to Stirling Castle, she learned, and was told to stay there for a while as the rest had done. They wanted to see if his heart was weak or one of his legs were funny, if he could march and if he could fight and if he could do what a soldier could do, like the ones that went off to France.

_He isn't meant to go off to France_ , Evie thought with another feeling of dread; one that did not ooze from a room but nipped at her thoughts as the wind nipped at her nose. _He's meant to stay here with us and the horses where he loves to be, helping Charlie and helping me and what will happen if he doesn't come back_ \- . . .

She thought the same of her father and yet he had gone anyway, hugged her there on those cobblestones where their horses left them as he left them, as Douglas would leave them; and Evie worried she would dream of him and her father as she dreamt of the horses, her mother, her unborn sister. She wondered if she would see them walking over their own graves.

But she never wondered if Douglas would be cold because he took the coat she held for him as he left; he took it from her hands too, knew she had gotten it for him. He said he didn't care that it did not come from his own, he would need that coat.

𝔵𝔦𝔵:

She thought the war had taken enough yet here it came to take some more.

𝔵𝔵:

Stirling grew wild with its noise and its business becoming even noisier and even busier somehow with fewer people; she could hear it all the way from their acres of land and feel it in the winds that blew with no mercy for her or much of anything, anyone.

Her cousins lived on Broad Street, placed in the middle of this noise and this business; her aunt and her cousins May and Maggie were left to work as well as mind the house, among other things that kept them on their toes. Evie came to help them on days when Charlie did not fall in the mud trying to nab ponies and when her other cousins that were left could handle the other horses.

She weaved between the stalls where farmers brought their produce and their wares to sell them. She weaved between packs of children and mothers who chased after them or didn't mind them at all. She stepped into a shop that was filtered by curtains and had its own orange glow, busy, oh so busy, with three women flitting about as the ponies did.

Stirling was a market town, but market towns still needed clothes and socks and coats that kept them warm while they hauled their produce and came into the center to sell. Her aunt sowed a multitude of things, mended old, and had her help because her cousins could not do so much as sew a hole closed or create an inseam. Evie did so while they swept and folded and tucked away profits; she listened to their chatter and they listened to her dreams.

Maggie enjoyed her dreams, she liked to think, in the way children enjoyed stories of babies taken by the fairies because they didn't know any better. She liked to think Maggie knew better . . . but Maggie grew bored with her minding and sweeping and Evie soon came to realize Maggie had always been bored, had always wanted to give an excuse to do anything else, had always wanted to be rid of the shop and spend her days taking care of the beautiful creatures her cousin spent her days with.

"Lucky Ev," she would call her. "My blessed little cousin."

Evie had half a mind to scoff but always bit her tongue and swallowed it, because she knew there were certain things which occurred behind closed doors that you just did not tell kin.

𝔵𝔵𝔦:

Before her decision to go down the path of a trainer as opposed to the business and trade of a breeder, she was exposed to the knowledge of other things. She knew for a long while that that which contributed to her family's good fortune and success did not dwindle down to simple luck and skill as it had in its beginning. Before a race would begin, before an auction would commence, as a child who hid on the stairs, she would catch men in caps and scowls shake hands with her father, and see a gun or a blade peak out from underneath their coats. She would later see them at those races or those auctions and nod as if they had done what they were told, only to hear soon after that it was her father's horse that won or her father's horse that was sold for a handsome price.

Evie understood that these men did things for him, that they would tip the scales in his favor and help him maintain that which his family was known for in ways that were not good and honest. Her father did not listen to his father in the way she did. He did not pour his life into learning about breeding and training because he did not want to, and eventually she understood that too.

But she had not understood that these men that shook hands with him went as far as to beat and bruise and kill if it meant that he would win in some way until she saw one of them beaten and bruised and killed by another man. She saw one of them, there before her at the age of ten, and her mother had scowled and shook her fist in righteous anger towards her father. "Are you so thick in the head that you let your child see that? Christ, Alan, 'ave you no sense? No regard for our daughter's wellbeing? What will that do to her, seein' that man cut to pieces? Have you ever thought of anyone-. . ."

𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔦:

Evie dared to think now that if her mother was still alive, would she scowl at her and shake her fist in righteous anger if she could see how her daughter was now the one who shook hands with men who wore caps and scowls and hid a knife or a gun behind their coat. She wondered if her mother would understand that what was once a method her father indulged in was the only card they had left.

𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔦:

But the war had come and took those men in caps and scowls too, so what was the point in wondering?

𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔳:

For a long while, Evie dreamt of her mother and her sister without a thought. She dreamt what she dreamt and did nothing of it when light beckoned her eyes open and jolts of nothing or something rattled her spine and shook her into the consciousness of the day. She could scarcely recall what it was that painted itself in her mind when it first bloomed from that seed, that moment which etched itself into an alcove of her memories and cursed her with a never-ending scene . . . a repetition of the same dream which would return over and over, plague her slumber over and over.

There was a time when she began to welcome the dream as if it were an old friend, for the image never changed; her mother would take hold of Elizabeth's pale hand and they would walk across their graves towards her, smiling in a way that was warm, even if the warmth never quite reached her.

She might have even considered the dream a blessing, to have the memory of her family forever there with her, a veil of comfort.

But then her father left, the horses left; the veil was disrupted, torn to pieces, and the comfort of warm smiles changed into unsettling frowns, hollow cheeks, and lifeless gazes and that which made the urge to flee crawl up her spine . . . though she could not. Limbs reached for her and she could not move away from them; they grabbed her and relieved her of breath and said this is what she deserved, and all the while she would hear the horses cry out until it woke her, left her gasping for breath which she had thought was taken.

𝔵𝔵𝔳𝔦:

And for a long while, she did nothing of it because who in the world could make her dreams go away?

𝔵𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦:

Evie could not be rid of her neverending dream until the sun stretched its arms over the horizon and beckoned her from it, freed her; though there had been a night when the limbs reached so far, faces frowned so much that she was startled from it, opened her eyes to silvery haze and found herself alone in the dark.

She stumbled from her bed and bumped into her bedside table where wearing letters from France fell and crunched under her bare feet. She walked blindly over creaky floorboards until she found some sense of consciousness, free from her disoriented state and far from her bed with her hand braced against the wall; and though she had not felt as if she had taken more than two steps, she found herself before the room which had been locked long ago, its door open and its dread oozing, prickling at her skin once more. She stared into it without a thought and met the eyes that plagued her childhood; and she shivered, for these eyes and this mouth and this face smiled, grabbed her without grabbing and said, "You deserve this."

𝔵𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦:

And yet the door to that room had never been opened because her stumbling and her shivering had been a dream too. She had never left her bed, and she began to wonder if she was becoming like her mother, if she would soon begin to see things that Charlie would pretend to see for her.

𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔳:

Sometimes, most times, it was not like this. Oftentimes jolts of nothing or something would beckon her awake and she would think nothing of it. In her dreams, the limbs would not reach for her and the faces would remain stagnant, and the horses would stand there grazing, out of reach. Smiles adorn the faces of her mother, her sister, and they would walk towards her. And she could see them . . . and they could see her.


	2. two

In the second winter since the war's unwanted arrival, Charlie fell sick with fever and Evie began to think it was another thing that painting would tell her she deserved. On a day when clouds blanketed the sky and hid the sun, her brother suddenly grew dizzy and weak and was confined to his bed where the ponies could not see him, never-mind tease him; and she found she could do nothing else but tend to the horses that were left absentmindedly and hope to the heavens that he would overcome it because in losing Charlie she would have no hope of avoiding medication that would flare her senses and make her see things as if dreaming while still awake. She would become her mother, and then she would understand. She would know just how much pain she felt and would die in the same way.

𝔦𝔦:

There was another day blanketed by clouds when she marched on to her aunt's shop and found Maggie crying over her broom. Tucked away in their dismal little back room, tears dripped from her dainty chin and slid down the tattered wooden stick which she clung to as if it was her only support, shreds of a letter at her feet, covered in dust and droplets.

Evie kneeled next to her immediately and brought the small head of her cousin to rest against her chest, rubbed the soft sleeves of Maggie's blouse, and told her everything would be all right.

But it did not soothe Maggie a wit. "Da is dead," she croaked with a great tremble. "He's dead an' he's not comin' back, Ev, what are we gonna do - I can't-. . ."

The broom fell to the floor; and that night, Evie dreamt of her uncle, too.

𝔦𝔦𝔦:

The morning after, when swells of clouds brought furious flurries of snow that flit about and made it difficult to tend to the horses or do much of anything, Charlie roused into the consciousness of the day and called for her for the first time since he fell into a state of half-there, half-not there. Slivers of pale light peaked into his bedroom and lined a face which glistened with sweat, and she sat at his side as she had done many sleepless nights because who was left in the world to do it but her? Their grandfather was always elsewhere, biding his time with talk of important prospects and such when he wasn't in his own bed resting.

A bowl of water sat on Charlie's bedside table and she let a cloth soak in it, squeezed it, set it atop his head even though he hated it. Charlie loathed nothing more than being confined, and even in his dizzy state he would snap and bark in weak protest and attempt to stand even though his legs would not allow it. He refused to be unwell, to be cared for . . . though when the cloth lay against his head this time, he did not push it away. Instead, he grabbed for her hand and looked to his window which displayed him in pale light.

He asked, "Do those little devils miss me?"

He would continue to ask, again and again for many days, and she would always tell him, "Yes, Charlie. They do."

She wondered sometimes if their horses out on those fields that were more dirt than grass and more blood than dirt missed him too -missed her too - because she missed them; she missed them oh so dearly.

𝔦𝔳:

Now for a time, Evie was at her wit's end and did not know what to do with herself and her burdensome dream. She questioned it, shriveled from it, cursed it from her mind . . . most often she simply hoped it would be no more, but to no avail. It was only a matter of time before she would bend to its will and bear it, and she did, for what else was there for her to do? She came to learn to live with it as if it was a vexing little border inside the delicate home that was her mind, for a while, and it soon dissipated into nothing more than a meek addition to her time of rest.

Though not so soundly, she slept. Though not so willingly, she gave up the stubbornness which walked arm-in-arm with her since she was but a swaddled bundle. And for a length of time, she was able to bear it. Charlie was nursed to health just as December gave its greeting, and the ponies danced wildly for him as if welcoming him back to the torment they disposed upon him with pleasure, shaking their heads and ridding themselves of a flurry of snowflakes; and Evie smiled in content from the window where she watched them, for she had gone many weeks without a recollection of her dream, though it had been with her this whole time, never gone.

You see, it liked to play with her, this dream, this ghost of her mother and her sister - now her uncle too - and it would always return violently as if pouncing on oblivious prey. It pounced on her for the third or the fourth or the fifth time on an inky night when the first week of December had come and gone, when Charlie was all well again. She did not bother to keep count, only knew that it would never quit; but Charlie, much like his sister, was perceptive, and did keep count.

"Fourth time isn't it?"

"Fourth time for what?"

Charlie was still weak when he asked her one night near the hearth, and his voice succumbed to a gravely sound as he spoke that made him sound thrice his age. "For your dream. The one of mother and sissy . . ." The sibling he never met either, he never called her by the name she would have born. "You still dream it, don't you?"

The old grandfather clock behind them gave a handful of ticks before she answered him with a somber "Yes."

"Shoulda thought. You got circles under your eyes an' always look as if yer 'bout to collapse, even now."

He had known that would work. Vanity overcame his sister for a moment and her hand raced up to the fragile skin under her eyes, brushed over it. Evie had no mirror, but she had no need to look in one for Charlie never lied to her of such things, even for a good tease as he so loved to do. He smiled as much as his tired state would allow him, maybe more because he could not help but be amused by his older sister's trivial concern.

He rather preferred his sister who stood in the gallops with one of their horses, covered in dust and sweat and a smile that was brighter than anything when the beasts did what she worked them so hard for; at least then, she was true to herself. Nowadays she was quieter than what he considered normal, ached in a way that he could see but could not explain, and longed for sleep while simultaneously dreading it. In other words, he could read her like one of their grandad's many old books.

And he dared to think aloud: "It reminds me of mother — . . ."

But Evie bit back as if she was one of those nasty ponies in the fields. "I'm not goin' mad, Charlie."

"Is that what happened to 'er then? She went mad? . . . No one ever told me."

"She didn't go mad."

"Then what?"

"She — . . ." For a moment, Evie could not conjure anything to say. Charlie was only six when their mother breathed her last and he could not recall the things which Evie pretended to see, that she now wondered if she was truly beginning to see. She couldn't bring herself to admit madness to him, even if it may have been true. And so she said, "She was — _sad_ . . . She lost Elizabeth without even getting the chance to hold her, and — . . ."

Though even in a weakened state, Charlie would not accept this because even at the age of six, he had known something was wrong; and he could tell her words were indeed excuses. "Right," huffed the recumbent brother. "Don't tell me then. I was only a child. Suppose I still am with the way you act like yer gonna break me if you say the wrong thing."

Evie began to sink further into the wingback chair she sat in. "You wouldn't understand, Charlie — . . ."

"Oh, I would perfectly, I think, that Ma was so distraught that she fell into madness?" Charlie recited the words with an air of certainty and arrogance that only a young boy who was on the cusp of becoming a man would, for he believed the words that came from their grandad's mouth much more than his big sister's. "Seein' things that werena there, that's what grandad said."

"Grandad knows nothin'," Evie bit again. "He didna see her as I did. I was there Charlie, next to her, I saw it happen to her."

"In the way I see it happenin' to you?"

"To _me_?"

"Yes, to you." Charlie snapped weakly. "Don't lie to me, Ev. I see what that dream's doin' to ya . . . or was. I know mother had the same problem."

Evie had to contain her scoff. "Did grandad tell you that too?"

"Da did," he said. "She dreamt of strange things long before she lost sissy. Da said she would take you with her some days, all the way to Birmingham to see a friend . . . and when you would come back, she would be all better."

"What 're you sayin'?"

"I'm — . . . I'm sayin' that maybe, if her friend, if — . . . if Polly, right? If Polly helped her, then why couldn't she help you?"

"It's just a dream, Charlie."

"Is that what ma said?"

Evie had had enough. She pushed herself from her chair with a stubborn look in her eye. "It's just a dream . . ." she repeated and left him there with the fire.

𝔳:

Maggie and May and the rest of her cousins, two aunt's and one little nephew named Jaime had come to fill the house for the Christmas holiday. Charlie found himself swept up in a horde of women, balancing Jaime on his knobby knee while going through what he considered a torment of poking and prodding.

Most of their kin were tailors, making the likes of every kind of clothing from shirts and pants, hats and scarves, to socks of every color. Her aunt Alice once made beautiful dresses for women of Evie's age, though now she patched up coats and sewed together holes in gloves. Maggie bid her time by busying herself with anything she could make, using Charlie as a model, leaving him poked and bitter because she was not a talented seamstress.

May, however, older than her sister and a mother of one little Jaime, spent her time answering letters from her husband in Evie's bedroom, fawning over them in a fragile chair that teetered under her weight despite the fact that she was rather thin. Evie kept her company, reading her own letters in the depths of about half a dozen blankets because somehow it was always cold in her otherwise welcoming abode, now dotted with watery light and shrouded in pillows and rugs.

After a while, Evie began to have more letters atop her bedside table than she did books or tissues or other papers filled with other things, and she started to believe that those who left missed her more than she missed them . . . or perhaps they just missed home. She would want to return to warm summer mornings too, evenings spent in the city to visit her cousins, mornings spent in the gallops, and afternoons that were calm and quiet.

It was understandable to want to return when who she so affectionately called "her boys" wrote were vague hints of images she could only comprehend in her nightmares. They never dared tell her what it was in truth, but she was imaginative enough to come to her own conclusion, and gather from what those who came in and out of her aunt's shop would say because absorbing in every detail they could find was somehow comforting and eased their busy minds.

Unfortunately, she could not say the same. She avoided the gruesome details as if they were the plague.

Her father had little chance to write her now that the war was progressing closer to two years and told her despondently in his last that if she did not receive one from him for a while it was only because he did not have the time; so like a faithful daughter, she kept to her optimism and hopes that he was doing his duty and only his duty, rather than fall victim to the things which crossed her mind that she would not dare utter aloud, and cast out immediately.

In the midst of the gaps that were left from a lack of post from her parent, Douglas was quick to fill them. He wrote as if a penpal and dutifully sent what he liked to call his weekly report without fail, though he did not tell much of his surroundings — only that he was alright, he promised, and the coat she gave him was still warm and comforting as ever — Evie was left to conjure up her own ideas.

May was as in the dark as she was; her husband had little time to write to her at all, sending letters that had maybe two, three sentences as he had already been shipped off to France.

It had been a time when they all collectively held their breath and hoped for kinder outcomes, when Christmas trees and decorations stayed up well after the holiday departed . . . but it was also, perhaps, a time when Evie was not the one who was always tucked away in her bedroom dotted with yellowish light — rather it was Maggie, because the death of her father had begun to haunt her in the way Elizabeth's haunted Evie's mother.

She dreamt in the cool, watery light of the day . . . dreamt in the chilly, bitter dark of the night; she did not eat much, did not go with her sister and her cousins when they went to care for the horses in the stables. And, to her disdain, Evie felt as if she was reliving a memory . . . because as the war plowed along, and her grandfather allowed her cousins, aunts, and one nephew, Jaime, to stay in Doune House for however long they pleased, Maggie began to see things.

She would peer through the window and tell Evie she could see her father. "Don't you see him, Ev? Don't you? He's right down there — he's kneeling in front of a grave . . ."

"I see him, Maggie . . . I see him."

𝔳𝔦:

Evie had told her brother stubbornly that the gray fields and the hollow faces of their mother, their sister, the horses, was just a dream . . . but this dream was becoming near insufferable, having returned abruptly and unapologetically in the new year of 1916, and nearing the point of malicious.

She never dared tell Charlie, nor did she tell the cousins who slept nearby — though she had a feeling the later were catching on, and the only reason they did not say anything was out of sheer courtesy . . . or perhaps pity. Pity that poor Ev was afraid of her dreams. Pity that poor Maggie was seeing the ghost of her father. Pity, pity, pity, while they flit about their sewing and their knitting and tended to poor old grandfather Malcolm who Evie knew was not as under the weather and bedridden as he made himself out to be.

She could not exactly scold him for it, he looked as if he could use a little petting with his dark circles and his aching bones . . . Most of his time was spent making sure their last streams of income would keep them warm and well-fed, able to keep the house; and he worked hard to keep it too. Evie didn't ask questions, she didn't need to; they would only leave him irate, and give her the answers she already had. Malcolm Mackinnon shook hands with men in caps that hid guns in their coats long before she did or her father did, and she was in no right to suddenly bear looks of disapproval. He did what he thought he had to do.

Therefore Evie chose to spend most of her time with May, walking about the grounds as the snow lessened and spring inched closer once more; they brought Jaime along to wave at the horses because he would ask Evie every morning if he could see them when he came wobbling into her room. He was only four, but his vocabulary was broad, and his curiosity was as baffling as his golden hair . . . and he noticed a lot more than she gave him credit for.

"Sleep Evie," he would tell her when she began to tire. "Sleep . . ." and he would wiggle out of her arms and ask his mother to hold him.

She began to think of what Charlie told her once more when Jaime did not come waddling into her bedroom, on a morning when the watery light which Maggie woke up to had turned into warm, orange streams that spilled onto the floor as they had once done. Evie sat in her pile of blankets and stared at her bedside table, listening to Maggie's soft breathing because her cousin had begged to stay with her . . . "Don't let me sleep alone, Ev, _please_ don't let me sleep alone."

Evie was rather grateful that she begged, because though her own dream had returned, far worse than when they had left, having someone near her managed to subdue it. Limbs did not grab for her and voices did not scream "You deserve this." . . . She hoped she was doing the same kindness for Maggie, blurring her dreams of her father.

All the same, she couldn't shake Charlie's words: _Da said she would take you with her some days, all the way to Birmingham to see a friend . . . and when you would come back, she would be all better_.

Traveling was a forbidden suggestion in these times, a taboo almost with her aunt Alice, her grandad . . . even May; they would be livid, perhaps even lock her in her bedroom if she tried to take a train all the way to Birmingham for a dream. They were so paranoid, so scared that she might walk into the path of a pistol when the possibility of it occurring was very, very real. She had a feeling they would take that truth to their graves and decided not to try her luck, rather rummaged through her piles of letters for a clean piece of paper, a pen, and began to think of what she could possibly say to Polly Gray . . . because as she finally found some parchment, looked down at its blankness, words seemed to fail her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the kudos and lovely comments i've received so far! i really really appreciate it. 🥺


	3. three

𝒟𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝒫𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦 ﹔

I know perhaps that you will not recognize my name upon receiving this letter, so I shall set aside the haste I feel to tell you my reasons for writing and first introduce myself. Though it states 'Evangeline' on the envelope, I hope that perhaps you might find the name Evie familiar. I am the daughter of Margaret Mackinnon, a woman who used to visit you in Birmingham many years ago.

It has been nearly nine years since her death, though I am not sure if you were made aware of her passing as the time since my mother and I have seen you has been for longer. I was only twelve years old when I last stepped into your house, soaked in sunshine on that final day she brought me with her. I'm sad to say I can only remember you faintly, and your family just the same. That brilliant sunshine and her reasons for coming to Birmingham seem to stand out amidst it all and leave everything else in a blur.

It is also why I write to you . . . I fear her ailments have passed on to me. Much like my mother, I have been plagued with dreams ever since her death — the same dream, in fact, for what feels like an age. I admit I have done nothing to rid myself of it for a very long time ﹔ I know nothing that could help me, and I regret taking so long to write to you now that I am on the other end of it.

I only hope now that you might be able to help me. I know my mother came to you for a remedy for her nightmares, and I know from my time spent with her alone that coming to Birmingham, to see you, had been the best thing for her . . . even though she did not survive it in the end. My clearest memories are that of the shut door I would press my ear to in an attempt to listen to your conversations, I admit, though I never quite heard what it was that was said. I wonder if you might be so kind as to tell me what it was that you told her and if it might help me as well.

I must apologize for being so abrupt ﹔ I gather I sound that way. We have all been through much, as I imagine these past few years have been no easier for you than they have been for me. It is not my intention to demand anything of you, I only hope that I might find some relief or confirmation in writing to you, and hopefully in receiving a response . . . I know no one else who I could possibly turn to. I fear this dream is eating away at me, continuously showing my mother, my sister whom I never met. At first, it seemed they were angry at me ﹔ they grabbed for me and I felt as if I could not breathe, but now it is as if they are beckoning me somewhere, and I never want to go.

I hope you are well amidst everything, and if you choose not to reply, I will understand. Do not feel obligated, only know that I hope to speak to you one day, face to face when this is all over.

𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒚﹐

ℰ𝑣𝑖𝑒 ℳ𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑛

𝔦𝔦:

Evie stepped out into more puddles that had found their way to the cobblestones. Two skinny hands gripped around her coat-arm almost painfully, as if afraid she might walk too far — that if they did not hold so tightly they would lose her and become lost. Maggie clung to Evie as if she was her only hold on the world most days; she followed her guidance across the dampened fields that squished and squelched as if a dog that had long since been beaten and abused had lost itself, and placed its faith only in its tender-hearted rescuer.

Maggie did not talk to her sister or her mother much, or Charlie or her nephew who prodded her with the same toothy grin and wobbly knees that he used to coax Evie; she only talked to Evie. No longer "lucky Ev" or "my blessed little cousin", but "lovely Ev". Maggie's precious hours where she once swept and chatted and attempted to sew were spent sleeping, dreaming, gazing into fields of green below with her cheek brushed against the drape. Her mother would come in the mornings and coax her to eat, would ask questions and receive no answers, would return in the afternoon and evening, coaxing, asking . . . but nothing . . . Maggie would only ever ask questions of her own.

"Do you think it hurt 'im? . . . Dyin'?"

"Why is da here rather than heaven? Why is he out there where it's freezin'?"

"Do you know why Aunt Meg named you Evangeline, Ev?"

Evie quite loathed thinking of the reasons that might have trickled through her mother's conscious, why such a name settled into her psyche so stubbornly, because the only liable truth that came to Evie was that her mother wished to brand her with a life long joke. Evie had never found her full name agreeable; because of this, according to her, it was only ever "Evie" or "Eve".

"Mother told me she named you so because you were her good news . . ." said Maggie in an almost incoherent, muttered breath. "She believed you would bear such as she never did."

Evie found it hard to deliver such good news to Maggie as she stood near the window with her cheek against the drape, so much like her mother . . . but as equally not. Maggie would have sudden jolts of realization after a few days of sleeping, dreaming, waking, then sleeping again. It was as if she broke free of her stupor and proceeded to say she had forgotten herself.

"It's hard for me to tell the difference between when I'm dreamin' an' when I'm not, sometimes . . . I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Ev — I don't mean to be like this, but I just — I . . . I feel as if I'm bein' pulled into it by somethin' but I don't know what . . ."

It was decided between Evie and her Aunt Alice that evening that a doctor was out of the question. No doubt they would take her from them on account of seeing her father's ghost, on gazing through windows as if she could see her aunt who had long since passed and then come to her senses unexpectedly.

"You said Uncle Eddie's death hit her the hardest . . . maybe this is a result of her grief. Maybe we should just let it go until it passes."

It took them weeks to come to the almost reluctant decision to trod along in mud and bury a body that was not there; the body of her Uncle Eddie; he had hated his full name as well. Her grandfather was somber and slow, gripping his raven-head cane tightly; her young cousins were strewn about in the fields, splattered with mud and spread apart by yards yet all heading for the same place. They all had continued to pass the time without any true sense of meaning, days going by, weeks, waiting for a sign of something or rather the lack of something. Her aunt sewed . . . and sewed . . . and sewed . . . and though they came together as a dozen people, Alice had managed to clothe them all in something new and unnecessary. Evie thanked her for the gloves she had given her anyway.

She took in the face of Maggie as they walked to the plots where her mother, Margaret, and the sister she had never met were buried, watched as another grave with nothing but pieces of a letter to occupy it was filled with soft dirt turning to mud; it was the letter Maggie had torn to pieces, and her mother had wanted to bury it . . . she wanted to bury the bad news.

Their boy cousins who were left filled the grave until it rose just above the patches of green like the one that read "Margaret" and the one that read "Elizabeth" — both names carved into small wooden crosses. Evie thought of one thing that Maggie had managed to say amidst her mumbles and moans that came with sleeping all day, all night when she was too tired to ask questions: "No more bad news, Ev . . . no more."

She had yet to conjure just what Maggie might have meant . . . if her words had no thought, gibberish muttered aloud, or if she could see in a way they couldn't in a state of half-there, half-not.

"And if it doesn't pass?" Alice had asked, her brow turning upwards into a frown in the way it so often did. "I don't want her to suffer the way Meg suffered — I can't."

"It _will_ pass . . ."

𝔦𝔦𝔦:

Evie dared to wonder one night, in a fit of trivial concern, what others might think had they ever seen how her mother acted just before her death, how Maggie acted now: convinced they could see people that weren't there; it was something that could cause one to be marked as disturbed. Evie thought of how others might react, but it only ever made her angry that anyone could ever think such judgmental things when their only ailment was the grievances of a lost loved one. It caused her urge to protect her cousin, her mother's name, to grow all the more.

𝔦𝔳:

The bagpipes whose melody was carried with the winds and echoed quietly along the grounds of her kin were no longer there to keep them company. It had been a faint, comforting sound from her place in the stables, this tune they played in Stirling Castle since the war's beginning. It was born from the breath of men who encouraged their soldiers as they boarded a train and left them, carried on to France where they would fight in those fields that were more dirt than grass and more blood than dirt.

Their confident tune rang clear through the city like the pride of her country and filled people with courage when the usual presence of it was lacking, and those who were once brave began to feel discouraged . . . but now it was gone. The war had taken them too.

𝔳:

"You say you think he's well recovered from his injury?"

"I do, Miss, I do. Covered, well-rested, and we did well to keep him warm during the freeze last week."

Evie stroked the fetlock of one of their older, retired horses who busied himself with chewing, rather used to the gruff, weatherbeaten hands of his carer; the man inspected the leg in which a strain had ensued many months ago, now healed, but sensitive still, twitching under his touch.

"And do you think 'e's ready to return to the gallops? It's been quite a while since I've watched him, I'd like to see how he does."

"Oh, no, no. It's too wet and muddy out just now; but the challenge, you see, has been keeping him from doing such things: moving too quickly, going about in the fields where it's rough . . . anything that would put too much strain on his injury or hinder it from healing any further. If you want to see how he carries on, I'd say you wait a few more weeks . . ."

Alongside the rain stood a chill which clung to the grass in the fields; this grass became hard and crumbled into bits, fell dead with the ivy that twisted into the cracks and crevices of the house. The wind swirled around their windowpanes and stuck to them in the form of frost, made them creaky. Despite the excessive rain, she wondered if spring would ever come. Winds carried from the highlands and made a home in the foothills and lowlands, never seeming to leave, always blowing people one way or another, chilling them down to their bones. The horses were content in their coats and their blankets and their warm stalls; but when a gust bellowed from one end of the stable to another, that contentment was disrupted and the inhabitants were left to shiver, as Evie shivered now.

"If I didna know better, I'd say you need this coat more than I do," said a voice behind them.

For a moment she felt as if the wind had thrown her off-kilter, as if it had blown right through her bones and left her dazed . . . to hear that voice rather than read his letters, she might have thought she had submerged into a new dream; finally, something that was not her mother or her sister or the hands which grabbed for her and said, "You deserve this." . . . but it couldn't be. This voice was very, very real; she was not the only one who heard it, who turned to see whose voice it was that echoed from the stable's gaping entrance.

Douglas walked between the white, peeling doors of the stalls as if he had not been absent for two years, dressed in what she knew was not yet looked like same clothes he had worn when he departed; the same tired, distressed shoes, the coat she had given him.

She felt the pinprick of tears behind her eyes and felt the heat that warmed her cheeks and thought it might look to him as if she was blushing, but it was hard to focus on the redness of her face and the sting in her eyes when, despite all the evidence, she was still battling the wonder that if this friend she had not seen in so long was, in fact, real, or a figment of her lack of sleep.

He walked up to her with his hands wrapped around that coat and she wondered still, though equally pondered— if he had worn it as much as he had claimed to —how his coat was still seamless, free of tears, loose threads . . . anything.

"Your letter said you wouldn't come home for another week . . ." she said this without realizing her lips had even moved.

"They let me leave sooner than I thought. I — I came back yesterday, actually, but I slept so long . . ." Douglas trailed off for so long that she thought he had forgotten to finish his sentence and allowed himself to be taken away by what was around him. His eyes glazed over as he looked about the stables, in a trance, almost. The horses moved about their stables, made grunts of contentment, poked their heads out in greeting; some of them lifted their heads as if recognizing an old friend, and he was enraptured by all of it. He looked relieved.

And then he was looking at her again. There was an odd sheen in the way he looked at her: as if he knew he was there and she was there but couldn't quite believe it in the way she couldn't believe it.

"I only just woke but I— I had to see them; the horses," he said. ". . . and you, of course. I figured I'd find both in the same place . . ."

She considered the dream again, the possibility that she was so tired she was seeing images of her loved ones. Perhaps he wasn't there at all . . . perhaps this _was_ another dream, a new dream that had replaced the images of her mother and her sister and would ingrain another image into her conscious of Douglas. Perhaps she would wake with a start once more and wander down the darkened halls until she came upon that room she never entered, see that painting before her and cower under its smile. Perhaps she was becoming like her mother, like Maggie who fought it so stubbornly yet still succumbed . . .

She had to know. Evie stepped towards Douglas as he began to open his mouth again and wrapped her arms around him, hugged him tightly.

No . . . no, this was not a dream: he was there. He hugged her back and she knew he was. She felt the creases of his coat, the rapid beat of his heart, his ragged breath; had he been wondering if this was a dream too? He smelled of dirt, of smoke . . . heavily of it; and it was so comforting.

"Pardon me, Miss, but would ya like me ta leave?"

"Oh! No — sorry — . . ." Evie almost laughed out her words, hurriedly wiping away the stray tears she felt on her cheeks as she broke free from her grip on Douglas. She had forgotten the man she had been speaking to before, and that he was still there with them. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Murray," she apologized, gesturing to her friend. "This is Douglas, he was our stable manager before the war. Douglas, this is Mr. Murray, our new veterinarian."

The older man extended an aged hand and was accepted, shaken by Douglas's younger, though just as beaten up one; the mark of many years of work in the very place he stood . . . or at least that is what it meant to Evie. Mr. Murray glanced down at said hand and tutted in a way that was sympathetic, looked upwards so that his eyes meet Douglas's. His gaze was knowing.

"You've been out there, haven't ya lad? Seen it, in the least?"

"Sir?"

"The war, boy . . . _"_ Mr Murray elaborated. " _France_. I can see it in yer eyes, you've witnessed things."

Douglas looked as if he was unsure how to answer such a thing, though he answered despite it, after a moment: "It's war, sir . . . We all witnessed a manner of things."

"Where were you stationed?"

"The eleventh battalion; Argyll and Sutherland. We landed at Boulogne-sur Mer in the summer of last year . . ."

"And did ya go to the front?"

Though he had just begun, Mr. Murray seemed to grow more eager with every question; though this eagerness did not go welcomed. Douglas fell mute and Evie could see it on his face: he did not want to recall what he vaguely wrote of in his letters, front or not, seen or unseen.

"Oh, how rude of me!" Evie gasped in a sudden recollection, placing a hand over her chest, snuffing out the bit of tension that had begun to fester with Douglas's quiet. "I must apologize, Mr. Murray, but I just remembered my brother an' cousins are in the house, and I know they would love to see Douglas again. It would be selfish of us to keep him all to ourselves with the short time that he has ta be home, you do understand?"

Her sudden interruption of his inquires did not seem to phase Mr. Murray at all; no, in fact, he looked quite unaffected by the idea of having the sudden company be dragged away, despite his flurry of questions.

"Oh, no, not at all, Miss. I'm sure your friend would'na want ta spend his time with an old man and amuse his curiosities."

"On the contrary, Mr. Murray," said Douglas rather kindly, no longer as tense. "If you'd like, I'd love to return and hear what it is yer doin'."

Mr. Murray's face, covered by gray whiskers along his chin and wrinkles around his eyes, lit up upon hearing Douglas's offer; it was as if he had become ten years younger. "Interested in the veterinary practices, are you?" he asked delightedly.

"Interested, yes, but I'm afraid I don' have the means to learn it."

"Oh, well, come down 'ere when yer done, lad," said Mr. Murray with a smile. "I'll show ya all of it. All of it. I can spare a few more hours here. Of course, if yer grandad don't mind my spending more time here, Miss Evie?"

"Oh, no, he wouldn't mind at all, Mr. Murray. Spend as much time as you like."

The old gentleman nodded, and with that, returned to his business with the horse next to him, all while mumbling, "A good man, Mr. Mackinnon is, good man . . ."

While Mr. Murray was occupied with himself, Evie brought Douglas over to the entrance of which he had stepped through before, though stopped just there due to her preference of the slightly warmer dwelling that stood over them.

"I'm sorry about Mr. Murray, he's very candid — blunt, I suppose, without realizin' what he's doin'."

Douglas gave her a wary, sideways look. "Did 'e ever stop to think what might happen if 'e spoke like that to the wrong person?"

"I don't think he could . . . that's why I dragged you away."

He hadn't turned to face her since they stopped just before the entrance, where cobblestone became other stone buried under layers of dirt and debris; Douglas fixed his gaze on one of the stalls, paint faded and peeling, whose door separated them from a peppered mare; her name was Taibhse, Evie recalled briefly, sold to them by a family in Inverness who were in dire need of money. She had not been here before Douglas left them; she studied him as he studied her, dark eyes unwavering and white tail swishing behind. She was well-tempered and quiet, quickly becoming one of Evie's favorites, and, according to her grandfather, was one he intended to keep for a long time. She was thankful for it. She had not found one so friendly since Rudy.

"If you don't mind my askin' . . ." she began after a while. "Did you go to the front?"

"No . . . No, my battalion, we were sent there with that intention but they held us back . . . or — they held _me_ back . . ." He had trailed off.

"Why did they?"

Douglas wouldn't pull his gaze away from Taibhse.

"Douglas, why did they hold you back?" she tried again, though it hadn't seemed to reach his ears.

"There were so many horses, Ev . . ." he whispered, finally looking at her rather than Taibhse . . .

She saw it then, that real, genuine emotion that had been but a sheen earlier, now there for her to see as clearly as the rays of sunlight trying to peak through the clouds. As he looked between the stalls, as he stared at Taibhse . . . she could see it plainly now: Douglas was heartbroken.

Evie took his arm gently and directed him away from the stables, out into the winds, over the cobblestones and away from Mr. Murray's prying eye.

She had expected, if he was ever to return, to find Douglas scared and beaten in a way that was not just skin-deep . . . perhaps he was, in a way. In a way that she was now not so keen to hear, because once he uttered those words: _so many horses_ . . . she didn't want to know. She had cried enough over the mere separation from Rudy and confiscation of so many others . . . she didn't want to hear of how they died gruesome deaths or felt pain, anxiety, fear beyond anything that could be tempered. Evie could already feel the sting behind her eyes, and not for the first time.

She didn't want to hear it. She could see it in his eyes, and she did not want to hear it.

She decided to change the subject as Douglas pulled himself together in grateful silence. "What about Da? Have you heard from him? . . seen 'im?"

"No, I haven't spoken to 'im . . . but I've heard about 'im, Ev — I've heard a lot." Whatever glaze of that which she couldn't name that dwelled in his gaze before had been pushed out roughly in an attempt to sound steady. Douglas wanted to change the subject just as much as she did. "'bout a month ago, a battalion general came along to where we were stationed. I overheard him mention 'yer dad's name, talkin' about his heroics and how he did well to save a commandin' officer's life . . . They made him a bloody captain, Ev," he gave a very weak laugh. ". . . I heard of 'im again just before I left, too. He's up there at the front, leadin' his own men."

For a moment, all Evie could do was gape at him. Whatever gloominess she had felt before had suddenly rushed out of her as if never there, replaced by, for lack of a better word, disbelief.

"A captain?" she eventually echoed. "That's . . . _that's_ what I've been losin' sleep worryin' over 'cause I haven't gotten a bloody letter from 'im in a month — because they made 'im a _captain_?" Evie could have yelled right there.

Douglas paused, giving her face a once-over. Perhaps he was just then taking in the tiredness of it, the slight droop of her eyelids that sat almost permanently because she had had so many nights of lousy sleep. "Have you not slept at all?"

He asked, though Evie had not heard him.

"An' I thought it was because somethin' happened to 'im," she mumbled to herself.

" _Evie_ . ."

"What?"

Douglas paused again, brow drawn upward into a frown as if he was suddenly shot into another scenario, away from the white horse and the image of what he used to spend his days in, now seeing what it had become in the last two and a half years, what it had endured and what she had endured. "Are you alright?"

Evie could have laughed. "Am _I_ alright?" she breathed. She was baffled that he even uttered the words. "What does it matter if I'm alright? I should be askin' if _yer_ alright. You've been off fightin' in a bloody war — you braved _that_ , yet here I am losin' sleep over waitin' for letters!"

Though her rambling seemed to drag him out of whatever concern he had shifted to. It looked strange across his face given what she knew, but Douglas did not hold back the small smile which told her he thought her self-criticism was amusing.

"What?" she asked again upon noticing this smile. She felt as if she had just been run ragged.

"Nothin', I just . . . I think that I can finally satisfy myself with the fact that I haven't been imaginin' all of this."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I could never dream up you talkin' to yerself like a bloody mad-woman."

𝔳𝔦:

Douglas only spared enough time to reunite with Charlie and give the boy a moment to take in that which his friend had become; and, in return, give Douglas time to take in what Charlie had become. He had grown considerably in two years, and Evie wondered if their friend could take any more change. His visage had been so transparent when they abandoned his recollection of the horses, of why he was held back — which she still did not know the reason for — and by the time Charlie came out with a grin and open arms, Douglas shook and she feared he was ready to crack.

So he went home; she made him . . . though not before he reached into that coat she gave him, pulling out a letter, which he had forgotten amidst everything, that had been given to him on the way into the grounds.

It had been from another person Evie was expecting letters from, who she thought had forgotten her within the months that she had since sent her own letter to Birmingham.

𝒟𝑒𝑎𝑟 ℰ𝑣𝑖𝑒 ﹔

I gather I could not forget you even if I had wanted nothing more in the world, nor your mother. Although I was never told, I had a feeling, and have known of her death for many years now. I thank you for telling me anyhow. She was a dear friend to me, your mother, and you a dear memory of only twelve. I imagine you have grown much, therefore changed much from the image I can still recall. I do not fault you for remembering little of us, you were only a child. I did, however, give Ada your name as she read the letter over my shoulder, and she says she remembers you very well.

If it comforts you to know, I must tell you you are not the only one who dreams of those you have lost. That is, in fact, how I came to know of your mother's death. I dreamt of her in the winter of that year she died, not long after you buried her I suppose, dressed in white. That is all I can recall of the dream now, as I have not had it return to me as yours have returned to you.

You are right, your mother came to me for remedies, though I'm afraid she was not plagued with true dreams. She envisioned things, convinced herself of seeing ghosts, and had wrapped the notion so tightly around herself that it seeped into her dreams as it seeped into everything else. She was not plagued with nightmares, she brought them upon herself.

Just as well, I am convinced that her illness was not what her doctor thought it was; it was not an illness at all if you were to speak only of the physical. Your mother was grief-stricken, I could see it as plain as day. She could not find the will to let that which she lost — your sister — go. It ate her up until nothing was left, and I'm afraid to say that what I did to help her only relieved her temporarily. She was not willing to move on, therefore she could not heal.

You, however, Evie, from what I have read in your letter, might have a different devil in front of you. I only wish that you were closer so that you may come here, and so that I can speak to you in person as you say. Writing only opens the eye to so much. To see your face would help me, if I am able to help you at all. Please continue to write to me of your dream, as much as you can recall, and I will do my best.

I only hope your grandfather has had better luck there than we have had here, running a business as I know both our families do. I imagine you and your brother are still with him?

Ada sends her hellos from across the table . . . and, if you have forgotten, her brothers' names are Arthur, Thomas, John, and Finn.

𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆,

𝒫𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦


End file.
